Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Cenotes of Cuzamá - Chelentún, Chacsinic-Ché, and Bolonchojool

The tiny town of Cuzamá is the gateway to three of the more impressive cenotes in the Yucatán. Cenotes are basically sinkholes/underground caves filled with groundwater. The area has no rivers, so all the water seeps through the limestone rocks and finds its way into these clear blue pools. This site has a tiny railroad track connecting the three cenotes, pulling you on a small cart drawn by a horse.


(We took the cart about 20 minutes down the tracks to the first cenote. At each stop, the driver gives you about a half hour to go swimming and take in the beautiful serenity.)


(The hot sun beats down as you glide along, making your way to the caves.)


(The entrance to the first cenote - Chelentún. This one is partially open to the surface, with a set of steep stairs heading down into the water.)


(Apart from my first five minutes with two other Americans, I had the place again to myself, a recurring theme for this trip. I swam around in the stunning blue water, though I did manage to scare myself a bit when thinking about what prehistoric creatures could be lurking in a remote place like this.)


(The water color here is unbelievable.)


(Looking back towards the mouth of the cave and entrance to Chelentún.)


(One final shot of Chelentún before moving on to the next cenote.)


(The entrance to this darker cenote was a little tight, just wide enough to climb down the long, narrow ladder with my backpack brushing the rock wall as I made my way in to Bolonchojool.)


(One of the Spanish tourists hanging out in beautiful Bolonchojool. Two small openings in the top of the cave let in just a bit of light on the blue water. Later, I swam out to the middle of this and was able to barely reach the hanging roots coming all the way down from the ceiling about 100 feet above.)


(Once the other swimmers left, the water was still, and the place was even more amazing. I had been to this set of three cenotes back in 2007, though I decided to do a bit more swimming this time, which is impressive to anyone who knows my attitude towards swimming.)


(Here's my driver, turning the cart around and getting ready to take me down to the final cenote.)


(Another very steep set of stairs requiring you to pass under a rock entrance only about 4.5 feet high leads you down to Chacsinic-Ché.)


(Here you can see the stairs leading out of Chacsinic-Ché. If you look very closely, you can see a platform near the bottom right of the picture that is a diving platform into the pristine water below. I actually made two jumps off here, though it turned out to be a lot higher than I thought upon first inspection.)


(Again, roots from the trees on the surface come down all the way to the water level, eventually turning into stalactites as they calcify.)


(This was probably the deepest of the cenotes. The clear blue water seems to go down forever, and a lot of the cenotes in the area are actually connected, allowing scuba divers to connect between a few of them.)


(A partial view of the entrance to Chacsinic-Ché.)


(A sign on the walls of the town warning against Dengue Fever.)

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